The massive scale of the buildings, cranes, and pieces of construction equipment rendered the workers almost to insignificance. The derricks towering over the yard swung slabs of steel from the beached ships to fenced-in areas where grimy men attacked them with torches, hammers, and their bare hands. From Juan’s vantage a quarter mile from the beach, they looked like ants devouring the carapace of some giant beetle.

And around the Oregon floated an armada of the damned. The fleet of derelict ships destined to be torn apart at the yard stretched nearly to the horizon. They comprised an archipelago of rusted hulks as haunted and forlorn as the spirits of the dead awaiting entrance into hell. The container ships, oilers, and bulk freighters reminded him of a herd of cattle in the pens of a slaughterhouse. The Oregon’s decrepit state was artful camouflage, but around her was the real thing, the consequence of salt air, raging seas, and neglect.

“Will you look at that,” Max Hanley said, stepping out from the bridge. He wore a pair of grease-stained coveralls. The oil was fresh. He’d just come from the engine room. “Compared to some of those tubs, I’d say the old Oregon looks shipshape and Bristol fashion.”

A deafening roar from inside the large warehouse reverberated across the bay and drowned out Cabrillo’s reply.

“What is that?” Max exclaimed after the noise faded.

“Murph’s new stereo?” Juan laughed. “I think there’s some kind of saw inside the warehouse. I read about them once — big chain-driven machines that can cut a ship like a slicer going through a loaf of bread.”

Max ducked into the bridge to retrieve a pair of binoculars from their cradle under the chart table. After a few minutes, the warehouse’s landward doors cranked open. Small diesel locomotives emerged towing a twenty-foot-thick slice of a ship. The segment had a graceful flare, almost like a sculpture, and had come from near the unknown vessel’s bow. A mobile crane lifted the section into the air once the train engines had reached the end of the tracks. The piece was open in the middle. Whatever ship it had come from had cargo holds rather than decks, most likely a bulk carrier or a tanker.

“Looks like a freighter-shaped cookie cutter,” Max remarked.

“Big cookie,” Juan said as the chunk of steel was laid on its side for workers to continue the disassembly process.

Something about his distracted tone caught Hanley’s attention. “What’s going on in that cesspool you call a mind?”

“We know Singh is involved. But I’ve been up here a couple of hours, and the place looks like it’s on the up-and-up except what might be going on inside the shed.”

“Where the ship saw is?”

“Uh-huh.” Juan studied the building from the binoculars he’d taken from Max. “I want to take a peek inside tonight.”

“What about the Maus?”